EU Ambassador on Bill on Judges: Georgian Parliament ‘Missed a Chance’
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Monday, May 6
The EU Ambassador to Georgia Carl Hartzell says that the Georgian Parliament could have adopted a better bill on the selection and appointment of the Supreme Court judges if it had spent more time on the discussion of the recommendations provided by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe regarding the bill.
The statement came last week, shortly after the Georgian parliament approved the bill with its third and final reading and then it was signed by the president, reflecting the amendments in the law.
"It is very important to have transparent and reliable procedures when it comes to the appointment of judges. We, together with the Council of Europe and the United States, have actively been engaged in terms of giving advice in this process. The recommendations received from the Venice Commission are in line with the goals we tried to achieve. I think the parliament missed a chance by not spending much time on discussing the recommendations of the Venice Commission," Hartzell said.
Acting US Ambassador Ross Wilson also said that he is a “bit disappointed” that the bill drafted by the Ruling party MPs on the selection and appointment of Georgian Supreme Court judges did not fully reflect the recommendations of the EU, Council of Europe, OSCE and the Venice Commission.
Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze and several other ruling party MPs drafted a bill in the wake of controversial nomination of 10 judges for the Georgian Supreme Court by the High Council of Justice, a body responsible for selection and appointment of judges in the country, back in December 2018.
The nomination was grilled as NGOs, opposition and several members of the ruling party stated that the list included the judges who used to deliver biased verdicts under the United National Movement leadership.
The NGOs and the opposition also criticized the bill provided by Kobakhidze and others, saying that the bill maintained chances for the “biased judges” stay in the system.
The ruling party requested recommendations from the Venice Commission to provide the bill which would have been “in the interests of all parties.”
The recommendations of the Venice Commission said that the bill should have set a higher age standard for candidates, non-judge candidates should not have been forced to pass an exam in law, a secret balloting should have been rejected during voting, a High Council of Justice member, who would have run for judge, must have been banned from voting and several others.
The ruling party said that they would not have considered the “political part” of the recommendations, which said that the current parliament should not have approved 17 judges for the Supreme Court and that it raised questions that the High Council of Justice, “which has low trust” in public, would have been able to nominate judges for the court.
Secret balloting remained in the force, as well as the younger age of judges, while the members of the High Council of Justice, who will run for the Supreme Court judge, will be deprived of the right to vote and the exam was also removed.
Currently, there are 11 judges in the Supreme Court when their number must be 28.
Based on the new Georgian constitution, which came into play in December 2018, judges for the Supreme Court are selected by the High Council of Justice and parliament approves them.
